Thursdays
by NovaCaine
Summary: Don Cragen never could get the hang of Thursdays. (CragenAlex friendship, implied AlexOlivia)


**Title**: Thursdays   
** Fandom**: SVU  
** Characters/Pairing**: Cragen/Alex friendship, implied Alex/Olivia  
** Spoilers**: Loss  
** Rating**: K+ (PG)  
** Summary**: Don Cragen never could get the hang of Thursdays.

**A/N**: Written for the thursday100plus "Thursday" challenge and remaindered.

Don Cragen never could get the hang of Thursdays. Thursday used to be the day Marge worked the redeye, leaving him to his own devices with the boys from the squad. But then he got sober, and he started to spend his Thursday nights at home alone, trying to stave off the temptation and old habits by watching Cosby and Family Ties.

One quiet Thursday night, he got the call about Marge's plane going down somewhere in Florida. And the solitary night at home wasn't about being strong in his sobriety anymore, becoming instead a punishment, confinement inside a lonely box with too many ghosts drifitng inside, an even stronger urge for him to drink.

During the day, Cragen would seem cranky and restless, subconsciously dreading the arrival of night and the associated anxiety of figuring out how to distract himself from thoughts of Marge while staying out of his cups. So he'd pace the most on Thursdays, prowl the squad room drawing charts on the whiteboard, open and shut his bottom desk drawer every other hour or so. As evening approached, he would bury himself in paperwork, chewing on Red Vines like a chain smoker quitting cold-turkey, or flip through cold casefiles, absently flicking his pocket knife open and shut as he read.

Time passed, with Cragen's weekly routine hiccupping every Thursday, even as both his craving for alcohol and the pain of his wife's death settled into the background of constant dull ache rather than sharp, ragged loss, until he had almost forgotten exactly why that day felt awkward to him, only that it seemed like it always had.

One Wednesday afternoon he was called before the Morris Commission to explain the evaluations of two of his detectives, and got a young upstart ADA assigned to SVU for his trouble. The blonde introduced herself as "Alex" as Cragen blew by fuming, and somehow managed to get him to agree to a meeting the next morning.

Cragen showed up for breakfast at the fifth-floor patio café already on his ornery day of the week, only to find himself being handed a peace offering of hot coffee in a cup and saucer by ADA Alexandra Cabot herself. Standing there gazing down at the morning traffic, making small talk as Cabot sipped her orange juice, Cragen's suspicion began to thaw, even while he realized that the young woman was coolly, if subtly, appraising him. By the time they lapsed into silence over their menus, Don Cragen was certain of two things: Alex Cabot was smart as hell, and he was going to have to keep a sponge handy to mop up the drool when she came around the squad.

But as Cabot began working with SVU, revealing her considerable skill in the courtroom, Cragen realized something else. Alex was someone he respected, and someone he could trust. He and the ADA began to regularly have breakfast together on Thursdays, turning it into their weekly meeting to go over the unit's roster of cases. And somewhat inexplicably, most of all to Cragen himself, their professional simpatico evolved into a unique friendship.

Aside from a deep and obvious mutual respect, Cragen was at a loss to describe the unspoken understandings that passed between himself and his much younger colleague—such as the one, somehow established at their first meeting, that neither had any romantic inclinations toward the other, and never would. Nevertheless, their understated camraderie did not go unnoticed in the small world of law enforcement, and the occasional salacious rumor that reached their ears, particularly in the first year of Alex's tenure with SVU, was a source of much Thursday morning amusement. Certainly, Alex was a beautiful woman (Cragen's intuition of keeping a sponge in his office was not entirely a hyperbole), but the captain never felt the keen tension of physical attraction toward her, nor did he ever consider her a daughter or younger sister, as others surmised. To Don Cragen, Alex was first and always a peer, and vice-versa; there was never any condescension or true rank war between them, and it was perhaps because of that fact that they conversed so easily as friends, despite their differences in age and background.

So it was Alex who first noticed Cragen's Thursday habits, and would stop by on her way out in the evening to casually suggest a round of poker with Munch and Fin or Olivia to cap off the day if it wasn't too late. It was Cragen who picked up on Alex's discreet habit of short (translation: one night) affairs with colleagues of both sexes, and instead of passing judgment, would smoothly steer her away from more awkward public reunions. And it was Alex alone who realized the meaning behind the twinkle in Cragen's eyes, glimpsed a split-second before he cut his gaze away from the sight of the ADA and Olivia Benson standing dangerously close to one another in the observation room as they argued over a witness' statement.

It was late on a Thursday evening when Cragen was informed that the ADA and two of his SVU detectives were standing across the street when an explosion killed the DEA agent they'd just met with. Before the clock turned over to Friday, Cragen had cleaned and oiled his old service revolver and filled out a carry permit for one Alexandra Cabot, knowing his friend well enough to realize that she would need it.

The following Thursday found Cragen numbly offering his hand to Alex's mother in condolence as the wind slapped his coat collar against his face. He watched with leaden eyes as Olivia Benson lay a trembling hand against the glossy wood of the casket, her expression a thousand broken shards of grief and confusion. He reached over and squeezed Olivia's hand during Petrovsky's eulogy, when no one else was watching. When night overtook that day, he sat silently at a card table between Munch and Fin, folded on three eights, and tipped over Elliot's bottle of beer on his way out the door.

Don Cragen will never get the hang of Thursdays.


End file.
